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Saturday, February 2, 2013

Dance of Shadows by Yelena Black

Dance of Shadows by Yelena Black[Expected publication:
February 12th 2013
by Bloomsbury USA Children's Books][447 pages]★★★★This is a hard book to rate,
because for most of the book I was at a solid, mediocre 3 stars. But in
light of the ending and the book as a whole in retrospect, I feel as
though it deserves another star despite my disappointment that it didn't
live up to the creep factor I had been hoping desperately for (there's
definitely a significant lack of creep in YA). But looking around that
bias I do think it's a decent mystery novel, just nothing to make my
skin crawl or my spine tingle.

I think it you're looking for
something for a little different and you don't mind reading a lot of
ballet scenes (stunning scenes really, but I've always been interested
in ballet, so I'm speaking from bias) then this will be a good book for
you. And really, the ballet scenes were my favorite part--especially the
end. The detail and everything was just perfect.

But the
day-to-day school life did get marginally annoying and boring, Vanessa's
circular logic was tiring. There wasn't nearly as much self doubt as I
would have suspected. She makes feeling like you're going crazy to be a
pretty mundane experience.